


Things Already Seen - Odd Lots

by bratfarrar



Series: Things Already Seen [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-11-28 18:45:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bratfarrar/pseuds/bratfarrar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bits and pieces that didn't make it into the main story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The psych eval is mandatory, which makes sense, even though they already went through extensive testing and shit before getting punted through the gate to Atlantis. Or at least John’s assuming everyone else did. Mostly he just smiled a lot and talked around the questions and carefully didn’t mention his mother, her tendency to eat peanut butter and lemon sandwiches and tell him very strange stories as if they were history, and just why he might be so compatible with the nice alien technology.

But they’ve been in Atlantis for almost a month now, and all almost died a couple times (because John knows only one possible future—and has done his best to make sure none of it will happen, even the bits that make him wish he won’t wake up when he dreams them in the short hours of the night) and cracks are beginning to show, here and there. Dr. Kusanagi (Miko, who folds a thousand paper cranes out of scrap and finishes them two days before the Wraith attack) broke down over pudding in the mess hall a couple days ago, and everyone’s still on edge from that, awkwardly uncertain of how to deal with the slowly-coming realization that there really might not be any going back.

Well. _John_ knows that if they can survive long enough, they should have a ride home within a year, but every time he’s seriously considered telling Elizabeth or Rodney or Ford, they do something to remind him that they aren’t yet the people he remembers, and might never be. He finds himself hiding more often than he probably should, wandering the empty corridors and taking some small comfort that Atlantis is herself, as she always has been and always was. That, and becoming . . . not friends with Sumner, because there are too many ghosts in the way, in addition to rank and absolutely no interests in common other than the desire to keep the expedition—their people—alive. A better word might be allies, or colleagues. Collaborators and co-conspirators.

Anchor and drifting ship, perhaps.

Sometimes it feels like Sumner’s the only other living person in Atlantis, and all the rest of them are just warped and fading memories.


	2. Chapter 2

The weight of the future rests heavy on him like water in his bones, the knowledge of what happened despite his best efforts. The knowledge of what could still happen. He stands on the southwest pier sometimes, when he feels like he’s drowning, and watches the water until the peace of it flows into him and he can breathe again.

He once asks Heightmeyer who he is. She asks him who he _thinks_ he is, but that’s not the same question. What he wants to know is if he’s the person who wasn’t able to keep Atlantis safe, or merely the memory of him. Do those deaths (and he can name them all) rest on him, or on someone else? But he can’t come up with a way to say that without sounding schizophrenic, so he tells her, “A soldier,” and then realizes that it’s the wrong answer. He should have said ‘pilot’, because that’s still what he is in this version of things. Except he isn’t.

Not really.

“That’s a ‘what’,” she informs him, sounding either amused or pitying—he still can’t tell with her. “Don’t tell me what you do, but who you _are_.”

 _There’ s a difference?_ he wants to say, but doesn’t. The way she looks at him makes him feel like she won’t hear anything he says. Instead he puts on a wry grin. “‘Know thyself’, and all that?” Her smile’s no more real than his, and he spends the rest of the session telling her lies because the people he could trust with the truth don’t exist anymore. (Or never really existed, although whenever he considers that possibility, it hurts to breathe.)

She takes extensive notes. He pretends he doesn’t notice.


	3. Chapter 3

The man standing in Marshall’s not-yet office doesn’t look much like a conquering hero—more like someone who’s been kicked a couple times too many and is bracing himself for the next blow.

“Sir,” Sheppard says, and for all that Marshall’s been pissed about having the man forced on him, jammed into the chain of command like a puzzle piece that just _doesn’t fit_ and won’t and doesn’t want to—

Well, Marshall would be dead if not for him, and likely a number of other people too, and somehow the Sheppard standing in front of him isn’t the same Sheppard who’d smirked and slouched and just-so-barely skirted the edge of insubordination all through the weeks of preparation for the expedition. The veneer on this one is cracked and there’s blood seeping through from somewhere, and all Marshall wants to do is palm him off on the chaplain and tell him to stay there until whatever’s broken has been fixed.

But he can’t do that (because he doesn’t have a chaplain, because the people staying at home _wouldn’t give him one_ ), so he just says “At ease, Major,” and waits for whatever fresh disaster is about to be sprung on him.

He doesn’t expect Sheppard to go even stiffer, the naked pain in his eyes suddenly hidden away, leaving only blankness behind. It's like watching someone fold up their humanity and stick it in a box, leaving an automaton behind. If Marshall didn’t think Heightmeyer was utterly clueless, he’d be shoving Sheppard at her right about now, but that really, really isn’t an option.

“Sir,” Sheppard says again, voice like cardboard. “Any way I put this you’re going to think I'm crazy, so I’m just going to say it.

“I’m from the future.”


End file.
